merrion street

The Minister of State for Disability Finian McGrath TD, today announced that the Disability (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2016 will be presented to the Dáil for Second Stage on 7 and 8 February. The primary purpose of the Bill is to address the remaining legislative barriers to Ireland’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).

Speaking on the issues that this Bill addresses, Minister McGrath stated

“Considerable progress has already been made to overcoming the barriers to Ireland's ratification of the Convention. The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 was signed into law last year and is a comprehensive reform of the law on decision-making capacity. Work is underway in the Attorney General’s Office on a number of additional issues that will be addressed in the Bill as Committee Stage amendments and in the Department of Health on legislative proposals in relation to meeting the Convention’s requirement on deprivation of liberty”

Work is ongoing on all these other issues as set out in the previous Government’s Roadmap for Ratification published in October 2015 and these will be progressed as Committee Stage amendments.

The Bill will be progressed to enactment at an early date to facilitate ratification of the UN Convention as soon as possible, and as soon as arrangements are sufficiently advanced for the key elements of the new assisted decision-making arrangements provided for in the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, as well as the proposed deprivation of liberty provisions, to be scheduled to come into effect.